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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, May, 2025: see footnote 2.)
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On December 8, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered what would become one of his most famous addresses, to a Joint Session of the United States Congress. Unlike several other Presidents who have taken the nation to war without even a nod towards Congress, FDR was following to the letter that provision of the Constitution that in Article I (which covers the formation and powers of the Congress) states: "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;") Having turned five just before that very historic day, growing up in a very "newsy" home, I am sure that I heard those words, live, on the radio. The opening ones were: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
And for those readers who might not be familiar with the details of the Pearl Harbor attack, first of all negotiations had been underway in Washington between two senior Japanese diplomats and representatives of the State Department dealing with major Japanese concerns in the Western Pacific, especially concerning access to the oil of the then Dutch East Indies. Obviously, the attack fleet was well on its way towards Pearl while the negotiations were going on. (And on that day, there were also major Japanese attacks in the Philippines, Gaum, Wake Island and elsewhere.) The Japanese negotiators in Washington had been notified by code that the attacks were to occur imminently.
There is a remarkable Trump parallel here. Just a day after Trump announced that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear facilities would begin in "two weeks," on June 21, 2025 he launched a massive mission intended to destroy Iran's three major known "nuclear development" sites. Whether that objective was achieved is a matter of major controversy. What is not controversial is that the attack took place, not while negotiations were underway, as was the case with Pearl Harbor, but that negotiations would take place. The similarity is strong, and thus, although few people took notice of it at the time, historically, June 21, 2025 is another "date that will live in infamy."
Back in May, Trump, when asked if he has to uphold the Constitution, replied "I don't know." What we don't know, for sure, is if he has even ever read it.
Briefly, on the "tax bill" (which is of course, much more than that): "The House gives final approval to Trump's big tax bill and sends it to him to sign." Briefly, it extends tax cuts for the wealthy, increases the national debt, and extends deficit spending far into the future. . . . . To help offset the lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care payment assistance program and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits. . . . The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage. "This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that's exactly what we're doing,' said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman."
Indeed, he was quite correct. It is a generational reform, delivering punishments for the poor and low-income folk alike, based on campaign promises that the bulk of the Republican Party has been promising to deliver for decades, from their original opposition to the New Deal's Social Security Program (1936), through their opposition for over a decade to Medicare (finally passed in 1964), to House Speaker Paul Ryan's failed attempt to slash what the Republicans have always called "social spending," to Trump's failed (courtesy of the Republican Sen. John McCain) attempt to repeal "Obama Care" which eases the burdens of health insurance for certain low-income U.S.
But now they have gone and done it. It particularly affects voters in "Red" (hardly) states in which, for example, hospitals and nursing homes dependent on patients/clients who have Medicaid to help pay for their care, will not be getting that income and will be forced to close, eliminating care not only for the poor and next-to-it, but also for patients who happen to have private health insurance. To say nothing about the many thousands of health care workers who will be thrown out-of-work, with no near-by places to find it.
A couple of observations here. First of all, as noted, this legislation is entirely within the parameters of decades-long Republican policy, to "save money" at the expense of low-income folk (and in this case to continue to give tons of it to the wealthy through various kinds of tax breaks). There are two big "why's" here. Why does the Republican Party, in terms of its legislation, but not its rhetoric, go after the poor? It is a philosophy of life and the structure of society that goes back centuries, beginning in England. Poverty is the poor's fault, and thus they become "less eligible" for such benefits as government might offer to them. Not too many Republicans will say anything like this out loud these days, but given their policy choices it is clear that that is how they think.
(It should be noted here that the U.S. is the only capitalist/industrial country in the world that does not have a national health insurance system. But that is another story.)
Then the question arises, why do so many lower-income people, especially low-income white people, especially in rural areas, vote for them? Well, it all comes down to our nation's original sin, that those glorious words found near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . ." did not apply to all men.
That position was summarized well in the famous statement by Alexander Stephens, first Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, at the time of the outbreak of the (first) Civil War:
"Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race. Such were, and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's law. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich, or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Cain, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. Our new government is founded on the opposite idea of the equality of the races. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the White man; that slavery --- subordination to the superior race --- is his natural condition."
When Republicans (not all of them, to be sure) think about the poor, "the working class," the lower-income folk, they think about them in a similar way: they are "different," they are "less-eligible," and although we don't own them anymore (and anyway, they are the wrong color for that), we surely do not bear any responsibility for their well-being.
This will go down in history as one of Trump's major achievements. And in those "Red" states, at least some of his voters, even some of those directly affected by the massive cuts and, for example, the closing of health care services (to say nothing of higher prices resulting from the Trumptariff), will continue to vote for him. Why? Well, cannot say for sure. But it's a good guess that the three major themes of Trump's 2024 Presidential Campaign (never adequately highlighted and shot down by V-P Harris, by the way) --- Racism, Sexism, and Xenophobia --- for certain kinds of folk will continue, in their minds, to ride roughshod even over the disappearance of certain basic services for themselves. Something like why poor white young men went off to fight and die in the Civil War to protect and expand-into-the-Western-territories the institution of slavery which benefitted primarily the rich-of-the-South. Racism indeed is powerful stuff.
Are Democrats looking to the 2026 mid-terms? The Democrats would like to win a fair vote nationally, which would likely give them both Houses of Congress. But ah yes, there is that critical term: "fair vote." Very briefly for now (and this is a subject to which we shall return) the Republican fix (which likely was what gave them the 2024 election and has been used in one way or another by them since the late 1980s) will be in, and stronger than ever. For a detailed analysis of the current state-of-affairs vis-Ã-vis fixed voting, see Thom Hartmann and Greg Palast. (This is a subject to which we shall return on more than one occasion between now and late 2026, I'm sure.)
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Just a couple of other notes here.
à ? ï ? ? ï ? ? As has been frequently noted by many observers, the Republican-dominated-for-decades Supreme Court, over the last several decades has been paving the way for this TrumpRepubloFascist triumph. To summarize, there were the very well-known four major Supreme Court "achievements" of Chief Justice Roberts: "Shelby County" (on fully legalizing "Gerrymandering"); "Citizens United" (on unlimited campaign-financing-by-the-rich); Dobbs (removing freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy); and Presidential Immunity (at least for crimes committed in office by Trump).
à ? ï ? ? ï ? ? The date of the passage of the Republican "Budget bill," will be remembered as well, for it will condemn a significant number of U.S., including children, to ill-health and in certain cases, premature death, because of a) the direct effects of the cancellation of Medicaid, food assistance, and school nutrition programs, b) the widespread indirect effects of the closure of many rural hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-and-disease treatment-and-management programs of people living in the affected areas, regardless of their own income level (and regardless of for whom they voted[!]). A corollary will be the effects of the major unemployment among medical, nursing, technical staff, and administrators presently employed by the health care institutions that will go out of existence.
à ? ï ? ? ï ? ? The Trump/Musk split, although it has not led to death (yet), finds a very interesting comparo in the early days of the Nazi Regime. A man named Ernst Roehm was a key organizer of the Nazis' private army, "Die Sturmabteilung," the "SA," the "Brown Shirts," from the earliest days of Hitler's involvement with the Party. The SA came into being in 1923. Roehm was one of Hitler's closest supporters and associates --- until, in 1934 --- as one part of their price for offering their full support to Hitler and the Nazi Party, they demanded the dissolution of the SA. Hitler not only did that, but on the "Night of the Long Knives," June 30, 1934, he had Roehm assassinated, in his bed with his the-current young, blond, male, lover. In a not-so-remarkable turnaround for their kind of folk, Trump and Musk have had a very public falling out, over such issues as the elimination in the "Budget Bill" of all support for alternative forms of energy-use, like Teslas. It is highly unlikely that Trump would have Musk killed, but he has already threatened to have him deported.
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Footnotes:
1. "TRF" is short for "TrumpRepubloFascism," a uniquely U.S.A. form of the generic, "fascism." "TRF" could be pronounced "trafe," which would be a good choice, for in Yiddish that word means, literally, "not kosher," colloquially "trash."
2. Upon looking for one, the first mention that I have found, comparing ICE to the Gestapo, was made by Minnesota's Gov., Tim Walz, on May 19, 2025. The Republican's response to the comparo was to massively expand ICE's staff and functions in the "Budget bill." On a quick look, the newly expanded ICE combines the functions of the Nazi German Sturm Abteilung (the SA, the "Brown Shirts, the Nazi Party's private militia in action before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on Jan. 19, 1993), and the GESTAPO, first formed Hermann Goering later in 1933. Briefly, the Gestapo was a "police" agency that had the power to arrest anyone it wanted to, with or without a legally-sanctioned "probable cause;" decide on the guilt or innocence of that person in re the crime being charged, without the person having, say, the right to an attorney or to be subject to an established-in-law-judicial procedure; and then upon determining, on their terms, whether or not a crime (as they defined it) had been committed, decide upon, and mete out, punishment as they deemed fit."
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